Here is wishing a very happy birthday to our darling Virat Kohli on his 30th year

Virat Kohli, not many people knew this name back in 2007-08, as he was a chubby guy, with gelled hair who was leading the under 19 Indian team to World Cup. Year 2007-08 could also be referred to as the Era of the fantastic 4 of Indian cricket(Sachin Tendulkar ,Virender Sehwag ,Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid),who knew that this guy from the streets of Delhi was the star in making. Everybody in the nation was fired up because of the heartbreaking performance of Indian cricket team in the world cup and he led the Under 19 cricket team to win the world cup, the same year.

Virat Kohli, a Delhi guy who lived in Uttam Nagar. His father Prem Kohli was a criminal lawyer and mother Saroj Kohli was a housewife. Raj kumar Sharma was his Cricketing coach in his early ages. He started his first class career, by playing from the side of Delhi Ranji Cricket team. Intent of Virat Kohli towards cricket could be easily witnessed when he walked down the grounds next day of his father’s death in 2006 and scored a 90 knock against Karnataka which was his best First Class score at that point of time. He shot to fame after leading the Under 19 Indian Cricket team to win the ICC World Cup. From then he never looked back and today nobody in the nation can imagine the Indian Cricket team without Virat Kohli. After 3 years of his debut he was also handed over the captaincy of the Test team by the BCCI, in the Caribbean Sand.

1) The most arresting realisation was that when kohli reached 81 in the first innings of the match he had compiled 10,000 ODI runs so much faster than any other batsman in the history of the game, outstripping even Sachin Tendulkar.

2) Scored the fastest century by an Indian batsman. In the 2nd match of the 7-ODI home series against Australia at home, Virat Kohli scored a hundred off just 52 deliveries at India chased down 360 in just 43.3 overs losing just a single wicket.

3) Fastest Indian batsman to score 1000, 4000, 5000 and 6000 runs in ODI and the fastest in the world to reach to his 7000 – overtaking A B DeVilliers’ 166 innings in his 161 outings. Kohli is also the fastest Indian to 10, 15 and 20 tons and quickest in the world to reach 25 tons – eclipsing Sachin Tendulkar who took 234 innings to Kohli’s just 162.

4) First Indian to score two double centuries in Tests as captain. Kohli scored his first Test double hundred in July at North Sound against West Indies – which was also the first ever double ton by an Indian captain overseas. He followed it up with a career best 211 against the New Zealand at Indore in the very next home series.

5) Has already scored 16 centuries while chasing in ODI. Only Sachin Tendulkar (17) has more. Kohli’s 16 tons has came in just 95 innings where as Tendulkar needed 232 of them for his 17 centuries in chase.

6) He is the third batsman ever to notch up 1000 runs or more in ODIs for four consecutive calendar years (2011-14). The other two are Sourav Ganguly (1997-2000) and Kumara Sangakkara (2011-14).

7) He is the fastest batsman to score 1000 career runs in the T20 Internationals. Kohli took just 27 innings to reach the landmark ahead of English duo Kevin Pietersen and Alex Hales – both of whom took 32 innings.

8) Only batsman to score more than 500 runs in the T20I format in a calendar year – Kohli made a total of 641 runs from 13 T20I innings this year. His T20I average in 2016 reads an astronomical 106.83. Earlier in 2014, Kohli made 385 from 7 innings in the format at 96.25 an innings. His 7 fifties in 2016 in all T20I is also the maximum for a year.

9) He has also scored the maximum runs in a single edition of both the World T20 (319 in 2014) and the Indian Premier League (973 in 2016). In this edition of the IPL, the RCB captain has scored 4 centuries coupled with 11 innings of 50 or more – the most in a season.

10) He became the 13th batsman to reach 10,000 ODI runs and fifth Indian to do so, after Tendulkar, sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and MS Dhoni. There is a simple case for arguing that Kohli qualifies as the greatest ODI batsman ever because o the speed with which he has reached five figures. He took 205 innings to get there; the next fastest is Tendulkar(259), then Ganguly(263), while Ricky Ponting, one of only two non-Asians on the list(along with Jacques Kallis), took 266 innings. Kohli outstrips them all not only in terms of speed but also with regard to his average, which is just over 59 and his stike rate (92) – admittedly there has been some inflation in these departments over the last decade.